Upstate Flooding, New Homes, Press and Lucas' 1st Day of Pre-school
Old Lucas - today is day number one of the rest of this life. Responsibilities, obligations, duties. Life's never stopping train of added loads. He didn't much care for the idea this morning - though he was looking sharp, nonetheless, in his sleeveless sweater. Lisa made me swear I wouldn't put this one picture of his pre-school struggle up on the blog, but that's asking a lot of a flawed person like myself.
He is here the day before, testing out the pack that is like a bit too big for him. I told his mom that his pack was too big and let her see for herself that the damn thing kept knocking him off balance, but, like always, to very little avail. Off he went, loaded down and happy.
The floods upstate didn't hit Sullivan County too directly, but it did hit us upstate in the Saugerties area. Trees down, electric down, bridges out - and I traveled a bit more north into Greene County, and it didn't take long to run into closed roads and alternative routes. It's bad, really bad, and since upstate really isn't that super vibrant economically to begin with, it's a real setback. I stopped by Catskill, New York to check it out - boats over turned, and the parking lot across from the school completely torn up. Not good.
We had a few more press placements from our NYC PR team. An Interview with Upstater, an online upstate-centric blog (although 'blog' may assume 'online', ain't) - And a quick mention with New York Family - Also doing some interview with some press concerning 9-11. The Associated Press mentioned our story and efforts in an article last month, and I drove into the City yesterday to do a radio interview with Radio France, their public radio station. While I was upstate (actually, why I was upstate) I decided to check out the homes we are building. Here's Farm 17 all wrapped up, windows in. Now the electric, plumbing, heating, security, audio and air conditioning is in, and we will be looking for an inspection soon. One of the small but real impacts of the hurricane's destruction is the fact that the hookup of our new underground electric to these homes, which we finished just prior to the storm, will be last on the 'to do' list of the electric utility, meaning we will be waiting a long time for juice.
House placement is an art, and if you screw it up, well - you really can't ever recover fully. We are pretty good at it, and nailed it on this one for sure.
Cottage 37, a real looker, and for sale, is moving along at about the same speed. For efficiency sake, because they are a bit far away for us, we have sort of joined them at the hip.
It's been raining now for 3 days and it's getting a bit tiresome. Hasn't really impacted our construction schedules yet, but definitely motivates a sort of gloomy and perplexed pale on everything and everybody. Some nice person wrote me an email this morning alerting me, in the most kindest way, that I needed a blog post, since the last one was growing 'stale'. I hadn't even thought of it - but she was right, it had been over a week which is long time indeed.
Mid-Century Retro Ranch V
James, our project manager on the left, and Eamonn/son, the soon-to-be owners of Farm 11, posing for a Saturday afternoon snapshot.
Two snazzy gentlemen, but nothing compared to our newly completed and for sale little modern number (sorry guys, no appeal or recourse available). It's our 5th Retro Ranch. It's on 5.5 acres, borders 1200 acres of public land and for all intent and purposes just an extension of this property, and is selling for $220k. One bedroom, one bath, and a whole lot Je ne se qua, if you know what I mean (and for those frequent readers, this french digression is a first).
It's a good one - in the photo above you can see the reflection of the rustic red roof, coloring the house. And the car port. And the shot from the rear, capturing the stone pillars and stone chimney.
Lots of light.
Great shot of the car port, which could easily be converted into a screened patio, or even a 2nd bedroom down the line. I like it just fine as a throw back carport.
Our modern front doors, with a splash of red. I love a splash of red where i can.
Wide open living, dining and kitchen, with a hot red fan, chalkboard door, polished concrete with radiant heat, stained wood ceiling and lots of light.
Woodburning fireplace nook.
Down the hall, where we brought the exterior siding into the interior -
A hot bathroom with black and white and an apple green and some modern fixtures and vanity.
The one and only bedroom.
We have 8 houses finishing up between last week and November, and we are getting ready to get started on another 4. "Ain't no mountain high enough..." Au revoir!
Micro Cottage 4 Has Left the Building - Sold
Here's part of the Barryville Chamber of Commerce at the ribbon cutting of Bryce and Thom's new store named, appropriately enough, REGION. They carry local one-of-kind type useful items like a beer making kit, bluestone cutting stone, pickled stuff and lot of other good and unique stuff. I think Bryce was a pretty fancy luxury retailer before he built a house with us, caught the fever and now is up here more or less full-time. Congrats.
Micro Cottage 4 is all finished up and turned over the Heather and her son. Big times planned for this small home that lives real large.
It's really one of those 'good things come in small packages' types of things - cedar shake siding, screened porch, 2 cool screen doors, wood burning fireplace, stone chimney chase, back patio, 2 bedroom, etc...
I'm sure there will be many a grand entrances through this door.
And the sunlight striking the house melodiously. (trying to be over the top, fyi.)
Nice clean design and aesthetic.
I think we started this house in April or so.
And a pic from our trip to Yosemite the other month. I think this was on top of El Capitan.
Nice work Heather. it's one of those dreamy little houses I think will bring you lots of joy and memories (christ, who put something in my drink this morning? I need to go yell at someone or write an uncalled-for mean email and snap out of it!)
Yankee Lake House Nears Completion
We do a lot of new construction, but we also do a fair amount of renovations and construction for hire. Old farmsteads, old lake houses, or like we did last year for the Blog Cabin TV show, we reinvented a house that wasn't super old. Here, Scott and Erica took a badly pieced together over the years lake house, stripped it to the bones, added here, tucked there, and 4 months later a brand new house in every sense of the word. Brand new bones, brand new mechanicals and plumbing, brand new electric, windows, insulation, baths, etc...
I mean we tore that thing apart and it was one of those homes that everything we discovered was not up to par and had to be reinforced, sistered, strengthened, etc... Very challenging.
So we took a pretty lousy floor plan, and took very lousy views of the lake and just reinvented the house entirely. And it turned out great.
Below are some photos prior to getting started.
And then a sampling of the new style, the new bath, -
Vs. the old hallway (great pic of what we were dealing with. This was the lake view side for Chris-sakes).
All in all, not bad for 4 months of work, through a very tricky house and a very tricky couple of months of weather - magnified by the cold wind whipping off the lake.
